Shadow Hunter
by yammik
Summary: Story of Noel Kreiss and on how he got the name, Shadow Hunter. Also, what immortality means to him.


Title: Shadow Hunter

Summary: Story of Noel Kreiss and on how he got the name, Shadow Hunter. Also, what immortality means to him.

Disclaimer: Noel Kreiss belongs to Square Enix… I just borrow him

Note: Work in progress - reviews are very much appreciated! :)

Shadow Hunter

I thought about them a lot. I don't have a perfect memory, so their voices faded over time. So did everything else, little by little. Like how they looked when they cried, or was afraid, or their backs. Well, in truth, I was only thinking about one person in particular. The others I hadn't known so well. Her I knew. Our time together was brief but it was strong and clear like the smell of leaves, burning. It was her smiling face that kept refusing to leave me no matter what I did. I thought about that until my thoughts coiled around and suffocated themselves. Until they became ragged and worn. I thought about her a lot.

Even if I didn't want to, this world kept coming back and hitting me in the face. This world I had wronged. Wronged so, so, badly. I was alone and okay with that. I guess I thought it was my punishment. As if such a thing could exist. I guess I was consoling myself. I was alone but with myself. The least I could do was accept it.

At first I tried everything. After all, we'd tried to save the world by going back in time once, so why not again? Only it didn't work. Maybe it never had. The first time we tried we ended up making things worse for wear. Maybe that was the way of the world. It didn't want to be changed. But we tried everything at first. Hope was the brain in most cases so he did the theorizing and murmuring to himself. I sat and listened and offered ideas here and there. Mostly I jumped up at the first chance, ready to do anything and everything there was to do. I ran around a lot like an idiot. I tried so hard to make things right. But I couldn't. We couldn't.

And we couldn't forget either. We couldn't face Snow when he came back to find his fiancée, dead. I couldn't look him straight in his eyes. Though he told me he didn't blame me, that it wasn't my fault, I knew better. If it wasn't my fault, then whose? I'd vowed to protect her. Serah. I had wronged her like I had this world.

Her face I kept seeing in my dreams and everywhere else.

I left after a while. Fifteen years had gone by. I was supposed to be thirty three but wasn't. Hope said it had something to do with us being exposed to Chaos firsthand. We'd been standing too close to the time gate, or whatever. I didn't really care. All I knew was that I wasn't aging and I would live as long as this cursed world did, which was fine by me. I vowed to live forever and witness everything I'd done. To live with everything, the guilt. But to live. Live, because that would be my responsibility. Live to see the end of it all. And if there was anything I could do… I still hadn't given up hope. I left one day in the dead of night, with nothing but myself and my swords. I didn't say goodbye.

That had been forty years ago.

For some reason, I kept count of all the days gone by. The Day that Ended marked the beginning. In my mind, that day was always The Day that Ended. Little things faded with time, but one thing was as clear as the growing number of marks on my calendar. It was her smiling face. When she thought everything had ended for the better, and at the same time knew that her time was ticking dangerously to the end. I still couldn't imagine what that must have felt like.

But as I said, it was that smiling face that kept coming back to haunt me.

I was looking for a place to eat. My head was filled with numbers. When you had eternity, counting was a good thing to pass time with. I counted fourteen days since I last ate something. After some trial and error I figured out that I didn't need to eat nearly as much as when I was still a mortal.

I spotted a pub near the bridge. It was remote enough. I pushed open the door, calculating how much money I had and how much I'd need to eat to stay active for the next two weeks. Numbers, more numbers.

"Just a minute! I'll be right with you!" Cried a voice. I sat myself at the bar. Few men were drinking, some were eating. I eyed what they were having. Even after all these years, I still wasn't too comfortable with these kinds of served foods. What I was used to were animals I hunted and cooked myself. Serah would laugh.

"Okay, sorry. What are you having?"

A young girl staggered into the bar from the kitchen. She brushed off a chunk of hair from her face, then looked at me straight.

I forgot to breathe. I stared back.

"Sir? Are you okay?" The girl furrowed her brows a little, and I choked.

"Oh, I'm fine." I said unconvincingly. The girl was still frowning.

She had light pink hair that twisted and curled like a river. Blue eyes that reflected everything around her. Mostly, she was like my nightmare coming to life and staring at me in my face. She looked like Serah. Uncannily so. I wondered if I was still dreaming. What had been the start of this dream, then? This morning? Yesterday? The Day that Ended?

"Excuse me." I croaked. "Do you mind me asking… what's your name?"

"My name, sir?" The girl blinked.

"If you don't mind." I said, then I waited. Waited for some kind of a punch line here that I knew must be coming.

"Oh… no, I guess. It's Sara. Sara Lemont."

She looked at me strangely. Or at least I thought she must have. I didn't really see her face. At that moment, I jumped up from my seat like I was electrocuted and ran right out of the pub. She must have thought I was crazy. Maybe I was. Or maybe it was this world. Why was it doing this to me?

I slept hardly at all that night. Of course I hadn't thought to eat after that little universal joke. When I opened my eyes from a short and restless sleep, I was still restless and weak. Fifteen days since I ate. I would have to find somewhere else. Though if I knew my luck I'd probably run into Sara again. The probability of that made me shiver.

I paid my money and checked out of the inn weeks earlier than I'd planned. Shame. I was beginning to like the town. Harbor town, smell of the sea. I'd never seen an uncontaminated sea growing up. The salty smell of fish and wind brushing the waves had been refreshing. But now I would have to leave the town altogether. I couldn't stay and risk running into her again. In my mind, she was some kind of a devil come back to haunt me. I was almost afraid to admit how afraid I was. To tell the truth, I was scared senseless. Probably more than I should have been. I was weak from hunger and fatigue, tired from the burden and the years, and miserable from the weather that day.

I stared gloomily out into the rain, preparing to run out. I'd taken shelter under the eaves of the bakery. The smell of freshly baked bread was sharp and strong in the wet scent of rain. My stomach rumbled.

I stopped and turned around. I stared at the loafs of bread in the shop window, brown and warm and soft. I stared at them until I realized I was walking toward the door of the bakery. I stopped myself, but then I was already inside. The doorbell rang cheerfully and the accountant had already looked up with a smile on her face. Too late. It was probably my hunter's instinct. Sometimes my body did things before my head had a time to catch up. Survival had always come first. I gave in to the urge, taking out my money pouch. I'd been terrible at managing currency of this world for the first twenty years or so, but I was learning. Controlling, saving, spending. It was all about balance.

"May I help you?" The accountant smiled, putting down the book she'd been reading. I smiled back.

"What's the best you got?"

Fifty five years, and I still didn't know the names to these things. They changed too fast was my excuse. One day they'd be called this, and then that… Serah would laugh.

"Would you like to try the chestnut pie? Our special."

"Sure." I shrugged.

"Please wait just one moment, while I get the freshest one." With that, she disappeared through the back into the kitchen.

In hindsight, I should have just taken the cold one and ran out of the bakery. But how was I supposed to know that the corner bakery I'd stopped under was the same one that Sara Lemont went every morning? Hell of a coincidence? I don't think so.

So as soon as the accountant went in, the doorbell rang again with the sound of the rain. It muted as the door closed again. I heard the wet footsteps making their way to the counter where I stood. I glanced back casually.

"Wait!"

Her hands grabbed my arm before I could bolt. I flinched, but remained where I was. I stared horror-struck at her too-familiar features. Her hair, her eyes.

"Hello." I said uncertainly, attempting at a grin. I failed miserably. Sara was narrowing her eyes.

"You were going to run again, weren't you?"

"Well, no…" I squirmed away from her. Her hands were cold from the rain. Her grip remained firm.

"Liar. Tell me, sir, why did you run away from me? I couldn't sleep at all last night."

At that, I blinked back at her.

"What for?" I asked. Sara rolled her eyes. It looked painfully similar to the Serah I knew. Sometimes she would wear that exasperated expression. Most often when I would fool around with that Moogle of hers. Mostly she was joking, though. Not this Sara. Not this time.

"A handsome young man come in, looks at me like he'd seen a ghost. Then when I tell him my name, runs out like he's on fire." Sara said, still gripping my arm. It was starting to hurt. "Wouldn't _you _be bothered, _sir_?"

Now she was just doing that to annoy me. I squirmed.

"You don't have to call me that. Makes me feel so… old."

Well I was, I was seventy three years old this year, but I wasn't about to tell her that. Sara shrugged.

"Well, you didn't tell me your name. I mean, if it's not a terrible secret. Is it?"

"Wh, what?" I stuttered. The accountant chose that moment to walk in with my chestnut pie. Despite everything, my stomach growled again. Damn my hunter instincts.

"Your name. Is it a terrible secret?"

"Well, no…" I eyed the pie. The accountant was blinking at us, looking amused. I guessed she would be amused. I felt like a test subject already. And I hadn't even revealed the big secret yet.

"Well, then. If you don't mind?" Sara said. She was insistent. Just like the Serah I knew. Maybe it was in the name.

"Noel. Noel Kreiss." I said, giving in.

Sara smiled suddenly. And I got that painful pang in my chest again. The one that was like a huge needle poking straight out of the heart. Squeezing, slicing.

But I slowly smiled back at her. Because despite the agony, that was what I would do if Serah was back and smiling at me. And this Sara was close enough.

"Am I supposed to know you? I don't feel any desire to run away." Sara said. I laughed, and shook my head.

"No. We don't know each other. The reason… it has nothing to do with you." I said earnestly. That much was true. Well, I thought it was, at least.

"Good to know." She grinned, then took my chestnut pie instead of me.

"Pay up, then we'll go get you something decent to eat."

"This pie looks decent enough." I said. I paid for the bread anyway. As soon as I put my money pouch away, Sara was taking my hand and dragging me out of the shop. The sound of the rain hit my ears hard. Raindrops splattered onto my arms, my pants, soaked my hair. I grimaced. Sara laughed at my expression. Her laughter scattered in the sound of the rain, bounced off the pavement like little melodies did.

"I see you don't like rain so much."

"I'm not used to it." I said. Where I grew up didn't have rain. At least not the kind of rain that was okay to be soaked by without terminal health damage. I eyed the girl standing beside me. She was holding my chestnut pie, and nothing else.

"You don't have an umbrella?" I asked.

Sara shook her head. I shrugged, then started running. Sara's hand in mine. It reminded me of the past days. Many, many years ago when another Serah ran with her hands in mine, her laughter scattering in the rain like a miracle.

Sara took me to the pub she worked in. The owner was somebody else. He was chronically drunk, and it looked like Sara was practically running the place. The atmosphere was damp all over, the pub not excepted. But my discomfort disappeared the second the food was served. I barely took in how white the swirling steam of the soup was, against the dark curtained walls, before I dove right in. Onions and cream. The chestnut pie tasted excellent too.

"How many days have you not eaten?" Sara asked, amazed by my appetite. The business seemed to be slow, and she was sitting at my table, her chin on her palm and staring at me like I was a new species.

"Fifteen." I answered, distracted. I realized my mistake too late. Sara was already gasping. She grabbed my hands and stopped me from gulping in the rest of the soup.

"Slow down! You have to be easy on a starved stomach. Or you get sicker."

"I'm fi…"

"Listen to me." She forced my hands and the soup bowl onto the table. I stared at her open-mouthed, because that was exactly what Serah would have done. Would have said. The expressions she made. Serah's expressions. This trick that universe was playing on me was getting more and more bizarre. And cruel.

"What? It's for your own good, you know." She blushed a little, looking away from me. I realized I'd been staring at her too long. I looked away quickly.

"Do you believe in past lives?" I blurted. It must have sounded out of blue, even if the line of thought made perfect sense to _me_. I was thinking that this girl must be some kind of reincarnation of Serah. She must be. Except I didn't believe in past lives.

Sara looked at me strangely.

"I guess? Yeah, maybe… I mean, I don't see why not." Her expression changed to amusement. She leaned in a little closer. She still had her hands on mine, though. Preventing me from gulping down my soup. I sipped it with my spoon instead.

"So what do you think you were, in the past?" She asked me. I licked off the last of the soup from the spoon. I shrugged.

"I don't believe in past lives."

"Huh." Sara frowned, but her expression was still amused. Intrigued, maybe. Then I realized what I'd said. It didn't make much sense. Even to myself. I hastened to explain.

"I mean, I don't think that our consciousness is immortal and that it's just our bodies changing." I inwardly flinched at the word. _Immortal_. That word meant more to me that most people would ever guess.

"Oh?" Sara arched her eyebrow. I racked my brain looking for the right explanation. I'd gone too long without having to explain anything to anybody. My thoughts were so disarrayed it took some time.

"If we lose all our memories, then it's not really the same… consciousness, you know? At least that's what I think. To think that there's life ahead and behind… I think people are just lonely and trying to believe in that. That they're not disappearing."

"Lonely?" Sara's hands disappeared from mine. She locked her fingers together and rested her chin on them.

"Afraid, maybe." I offered. Sara nodded.

"You could be right, I guess."

"They might think… life is like lots of strings coming together, like… weaving a silk." I flung about my hands trying to explain. I wasn't sure of the words I'd chosen. I was used to thinking in images and flashes, not words.

"And in your view? What's life in yours?" Sara asked. Again I had to search the words to describe what I saw in my mind.

"Life is like… rain and soil. Raining on soil. Each raindrop dies with the fall… Disappears, but not really. It becomes the grass and the tress and the flowers. But it's over for the one raindrop that fell."

I was seeing a scene from my past. Academia. It had rained. Back when I wasn't used to the harmless rain of these eras. I'd made a fuss, and Serah had laughed. _Go look at the rain, Noel. _She'd said. She'd had her teacher voice on. _Look at the raindrops falling and dissolving into the soil. It's not scary. It's beautiful. _

I'd agreed that it was harmless after some time. But I had my reservations on the _beautiful_. It was water from the sky, after all. Wet.

"I thought you hated rain." Sara said my thoughts. I grinned cheekily.

"My, the great secret revealed."

She laughed, but then her expression became puzzled.

"So does it mean… you hate life, too?"

"Hate is a pretty strong word." I avoided an answer. I poked at the leftover crumbs of the pie absently. I looked up when the silence dragged on.

"Do you love life?" I asked.

"What's not to like? It's beautiful. Short."

"Short." I repeated, loving and hating the sweetness of it. A life with an ending. They said every story had an ending. Did that mean that my life would never be a story in itself?

"Yes. Short, but more beautiful because of it." Sara said. She smiled that smile. The Serah smile on The Day that Ended. The echo was so strong in my mind, as strong as smell of blood and rain, I had to ask.

"Listen, this might be a weird question…" I started.

"Everything about you is weird." Sara stated. It wasn't a question, so I smiled and kept on.

"Do you have a fiancé named Snow and a sister named Lightning? Or something similar to that."

Sara burst out laughing as soon as I finished. Some of the customers looked our way, curious as to why the girl was laughing her head off.

"What am I, a weather freak?" She managed between her giggles.

"Well…" I started, but then I really thought about what I'd said and I sputtered out a laughter too.

Strange. With every laughter felt like a part of my load was escaping too. A tainted black wall, breaking away bit by bit. Lighter. Softer.

"First, I don't have a fiancé. If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here with you." Sara said when she finally managed to stop laughing. Amusement lingered on her light blue eyes, though.

"What? Why?" I frowned. Sara shook her head.

"Where are you from? He'd get jealous, silly."

"Oh."

I thought of Snow. Had he ever been jealous of me? I didn't think so. And I hadn't thought that was strange, either. Apparently I hadn't had very good teachers to learn 'normal' human behaviors from. No wonder I was so awkward.

"And I did have a sister, but her name was not… _Lightning_. Who names their girl after a flashing light in the sky?" Sara continued. I nodded. It made sense. Only I hadn't thought that was weird before.

"So what's her name?" I asked.

"Clara."

Nothing like Lightning. I relaxed a little bit. But then something else she'd said caught my attention.

"Wait. You said… you _did _have a sister?"

I regretted it the moment I said it. Sara's face turned darker, only a shade, only a little falter in her perfect smile, but darker. There were secrets we liked to keep to ourselves, after all. I opened my mouth to say _forget it_, but Sara was already answering.

"She died. Murdered."

"Murdered?" I widened my eyes. Sara nodded. There was a distant look in her eyes. It wasn't rage, though. Just sadness.

"She knew the day would come… She prepared me for it. She'd fight, she said, but she still wanted me to be prepared."

My head was swimming like I was drunk. Drunk in darkness.

"What? What… What day would come? Prepare for what? What did she… know?" I babbled. I tried to get a sense of it all. Failed. It didn't make sense.

Sara wouldn't say anything, though.

"I'll get you our special tart. Cranberry." Sara said getting up. I opened my mouth again but a look from her shut me up. I watched helplessly as she made her way into the kitchen. There was a little more light in the pub now. I glanced out of the one window that wasn't curtained. There were dotted raindrops that slipped still, but no new ones. Rain had stopped. The sun was coming out.

When Sara came back with a plate of cranberry tart, I wanted to ask her more about what she'd said, but couldn't. She was smiling like she forgot she'd ever spoken. A smile that choked my throat, too. I ended up asking what was in the tart instead. Idiot. Cranberry, of course.

"So where are you headed, Noel? Out of town?" Sara asked after I'd finished my meal. I tried to pay her but she wouldn't take it. She said it was her treat. For what, I didn't know. I hadn't done anything.

"Yeah… I'll get on a ship and see where it takes me." I said lightly. We were walking to the harbor, as Sara had insisted she'd see me off. She'd looked oddly disappointed when I told her I was leaving the town.

Wet footsteps marked the road we walked. There were small puddles here and there. They held the sun and the clouds and the blue sky in them. For my part, I was feeling considerably better. I was well fed, good to go for at least two weeks, and the sun was out. Sunny days were my favorite. I was beginning to think that maybe I'd been overreacting. That Sara wasn't really Serah reborn and come back to plague me. How silly of me.

"You're so free… I envy that." Sara said, staring up into me and smiling that smile. I cocked my head.

"You wanna wander around the world aimlessly?"

"At least I'd be around the world."

"Well," I paused, gauging her seriousness. "Then why don't you go?"

Sara laughed. It sounded a little different in the sunlight than in the rain, but it was a nice laugh nonetheless.

"Wish it could be as easy as it sounds."

"Why not? What's holding you back?" I laughed with her. I was playing with her, but only half. The other half of me, the uncivilized part I supposed, was sincerely wondering why people of this world had so much restriction whenever and wherever. For whatever.

But then her answer stopped me cold. I felt the laughter break away and wither from my face.

"He's going to find me wherever I go. There's no point."

"Wha…"

Three things I realized with a sickening feeling in my gut. One, that we'd somehow wandered into a dark alley with no one else around. Two, that the buildings were blocking the sun and caging us into a dead-end with the smell of dampness and trash. Three, there was somebody else in the alley.

I turned around immediately. I hid Sara behind my back. Good that I did, because the next thing I saw was a flicker of silver as something gleaming flew at me. I had no time to draw my sword out, which I kept better hidden now that times were different and walking around with a flashy sword drew too much attention. I flung the knife out to the side with my arm. Fire burned where it'd cut into the skin. I didn't stop. The attacker dropped the knife and before I could regain my balance he was running out of the alley. What I'd thought was a dead-end wasn't a dead-end at all. There was a smaller alley leading to the left. I ran after him with my sword finally drawn, but he was already out of reach by the time I turned my head. The sun had crept out and it was in my face. I knew it was a man, though. He paused for a breathing second, turned his head and ran off. All I could really see was the shadow of him, in the split second that he turned his face, drawn long and dancing against the brick walls. Then gone.

"Noel! Are you okay? You're hurt!" Sara ran to me. Water splattered. Her face was pale. But it was not surprise that had sickened her. Not even the attack itself. The only thing she was horrified by was my injury.

_He's going to find me wherever I go…_

"I'm fine. But before that… ouch!"

Sara had grabbed hold of my forearm. Blood was dripping and falling in perfect drops into the puddle of rain beneath my feet. I winced.

"You're fine?" Sara arched her eyebrow. I shrugged.

"Okay, it hurts a little… But I'll live. I've been worse."

"And what's with that sword? Where did it come from?"

"Oh, well." I folded the sword away, but got ready to grab it at a moment's notice. First things first. "Let's get out of this creepy alley."

As soon as we were out of the open, Sara turned to me and opened her mouth. I was faster.

"You knew he was coming. He was coming for you, wasn't he?" I said.

There were some people walking by, but not much. A few glanced at my bloody arm. Sara was staring too. Her eyes were still wide. She nodded mutely.

"Shouldn't… shouldn't we do something about that?" She pointed an uncertain finger at my wound. If only to appease her, I took out my emergency bandage and tore it open with my left hand and teeth. Sara watched with a mixture of horror and fascination.

"There, done. Honestly, it looks worse than it is." I said. And it was true. My body healed most injuries pretty quickly. Just another quirk of being immortal.

"How do you know how to… who are you?" Sara had turned her eyes onto me. The light blue was dazzling, dancing, wavering, questioning. I shrugged.

"I told you, Noel Kreiss. But that's not important here. You said you knew he was coming for you? Well, who is he?"

Sara's gaze dropped again. She looked unsure, uneasy. The first time I'd seen her like that. It reminded me too much of my Serah. Even more than her smile. How many times had we stopped like this? Wondered if we were going the right path? Murmuring promises and consolations to each other, wondering if either of us believed it, imagining all the what-ifs and pretending we weren't. Uncertainty. Frustration. Hesitation. Fear. We'd lived in and by those feelings. It was something very familiar. The same that I now saw in Sara. I waited patiently for her to answer.

"I… I don't know."

"Then how do you know he's coming for you? How did your sister know?"

There was silence. Occasional drip of water, smell of sea. Still I waited. Waited for her to decide.

When she did, she decided to tell me and she looked at me straight when she told it. A look that said _I am putting my trust in you_.

"He said he was righting what the seeress had wronged."

I couldn't speak. I didn't run away this time, but I might as well have. I just stared, unable to comprehend and frankly not wanting to. One word kept suffocating my head like a resilient Cobra snake. The seeress. _The seeress. _I remembered the look in Serah's eyes on The Day that Ended. The strange pattern that I knew well, back in my time with Yeul. Forever ago. The Seeress. The Seeress Yeul. I was her Guardian. I'd failed to protect them both.

I realized that this was no coincidence. It hadn't been, from the start. And it wasn't any joke either. I had to clean up the mess I'd made. It would keep coming back to haunt me until I did. I'd been stupid to think otherwise. Deceiving myself in the sweet lie of redemption.

"Did he say anything else? Who is this man?" I asked. There was a sense of urgency in my voice that made Sara back away. I took a breath. I needed to calm down.

"I don't know who he is… But Clara said that – that he was probably one of the Scarred…"

"The Scarred?" I sounded numb. I felt that, too. I probably knew what she was talking about. Just didn't want to admit it.

"Yeah. The ones that were damaged by Chaos, you know. The evil that had seeped through."

"Right." My voice came out strained. Sara looked at me oddly.

"There is no cure for them, you know. You know that, right?"

"Sure, yeah."

Sure I knew. The people with no hope of sanity. The people damaged, broken beyond repair. Wronged from birth. People I'd damaged.

The world could have been crashing and burning around me. I did not feel it. Numbness.

Numbness was a scary thing.

Then I looked at Sara. Another Sara. My hands were already too deep in blood. My shoulders were already breaking with everything I tried to carry. But still I had to try. I needed, to try.

"I need to protect you." I heard myself say. Sara blinked in surprise.

"Well, that's an odd choice of word. Need?"

"Yeah. I need to."

Sara looked at me some more, but didn't say anything. She led me back to her pub. We walked in silence. I thought the lingering water in the air all around was suffocating. How I hated rain.

Sara closed the pub early that day. I watched her put up the chairs and flip the sign on the door to _closed_. I helped her mop up the floor and wash the dishes. She gave me a small room to sleep in.

One thing was bothering me, though.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" I called after her as she was turning to go to her own room. She turned her body with the lantern dangling in her hand. The orange light cast many shadows on the walls and the floors. Sara looked eerie with the light flashing up into her face.

"What is it?"

Her voice was quieter too. Empty pub, dancing shadows. Smell of rain that still lingered.

"I… you said you knew that he was coming for you." I paused. Then, "Was that why you said life was short?"

Sara nodded.

"Short, but beautiful. Wouldn't you agree?" She smiled. In that eerie light, her smile looked a little out of place.

"I knew a lot of people who thought the same way." I said. I wasn't really answering her, I knew, but I honestly didn't know what I thought yet.

It was true. A lot of the people I'd grown up with had the same lines of thought. They were the ones who accepted the shortness of life, the futility, the lack of tomorrow. They lived peacefully until a disease, an animal, or the environment took their lives. I didn't know how the end of humanity should be. The one I knew, it was strange. Half the people giving up and dying with a smile on their faces. The other half fighting, despairing, thinking and guessing. Hoping and then being crushed because of it. I'd lived a mixture of both. I was simple enough to deter my thoughts from sinking into darkest reserve of despair, but I also wouldn't stop fighting. I'd always thought I'd go down fighting. Now I didn't know if I'd ever go down at all.

So that was what had been bothering me. Sara had the same resignation of the End People. I didn't think that was fair.

"Sara. You…"

I stopped myself from saying _you're gonna live_. Wasn't that what I'd said to Serah when I took her from her home? _You're gonna come back. I'll protect you. I promise._

"I'm going to protect you as best as I can. I promise that." I settled on that instead.

Sara looked like she wasn't really listening, though. She was looking at me with an odd look on her face.

"What?" I finally asked. The lights and the shadows kept dancing and confusing me.

"That's the first time you called my name." She said slowly. I flinched as I realized that I'd been unconsciously avoiding using her name. Apparently she'd noticed it first.

"Look, I understand if you don't wanna talk about it… But you _were _running away from me that day. Weren't you?" She shifted a little closer to me. The lantern dangled again.

"Perceptive." I grinned. I was going to leave it at that, but something made me go on. Something made me tell her. Not the whole secret. A part of it. I thought she might understand.

"I knew a Serah once."

"She… is she now…" Sara blinked. She was perceptive and smart. Just like Serah.

"She's dead. But she looked just like you."

I felt something lift off of my chest. Just a tiny bit of the burden. Flew away like a bird.

"Oh." Sara paused. "I'm sorry… I guess that's why you asked about past lives?"

"Exactly."

I knew it wouldn't make sense to her. I looked eighteen. If I'd known Serah and she'd died, there wasn't enough time for her to be reborn and become Sara. But I didn't explain, and she didn't ask. Maybe she thought I was speaking figuratively. Or maybe she knew.

"Noel?" Sara called. Her voice had grown smaller. Like a whisper, but not quite. It flew off to the wall and bounced with the shadows playing. It hurt me, the familiar name called in a familiar voice, but I smiled.

"Yeah?"

"Will you… kill him? Before he kills me?"

The smile disappeared from my face. Replaced by something else. Something that made Sara smile softly, sadly, and turn away. I stood and listened to her footsteps echoing away into the corridor. Watched the light flicker and die. As I finally turned back into my room, I knew I wouldn't be sleeping again tonight.

"Good morning." Sara called the next morning, from nowhere I could see. I jumped at that. I looked around the corridor which I _knew _was empty, I mean I was a hunter after all. There was a laughter then, and I finally figured out where it was coming from. I looked up. There she was, peering out from a hole in the ceiling. It must be some kind of an attic. Sara let down the ladder and climbed down. I helped her fold it up again.

"Now how do you… " I started, Sara silenced me with a grin and pulled out an old red book from a bookshelf against the wall. There was a lever hidden there. She pulled it down, and the ladder jerked upwards, with it the door. It closed with a dull sound. The ceiling looked flawless. Just a ceiling and nothing else.

"Cool." I said lamely. Sara laughed at my expression.

"Clara was kind of a safety freak. I guess you'd have to be, living with a threat like that all your life." She explained, as she led me downstairs. The sun was pale and dry today, shining through the windows almost white as Sara opened them to let the air in. I helped her. I pulled the chairs down onto the ground too.

"He's threatened you before?" I asked casually, trying not to remember the conversation the night before. In truth, though, I had stayed up all night thinking about it. I barely slept an hour.

"Oh yeah." Sara's voice was casual too, as she answered. She was wiping the counter with a rag. "He said he'd come for us, when he killed our parents."

I flinched. I didn't turn, though, kept putting down chairs slowly, and Sara continued.

"He said he'd come when we turned twenty one."

I stopped my hands. I stared at them, thinking. It shouldn't have surprised me. Serah was twenty one when she died. It was so perfectly synchronized that it was almost funny. I smiled and it came out twisted. The only question was this. How did this guy know everything?

"And let me guess, you're twenty one this year."

"Last week." Sara said.

We didn't say anything for a while. Sara went into the kitchen and I kept wiping the tables over and over again, not paying much attention to what I was doing. She came out a while later with two plates of toasted bread and a yellow and white liquid-like stuff that I couldn't remember the name of. I blinked at it dumbly, wondering why she was carrying two plates. She set it down in front of me and then I realized she'd prepared one for me. It almost made me laugh. But since I couldn't think of a good reason to refuse it, I sat down. Plus, the yellow-and-white thing looked good. Sara sat across from me. She handed me a fork.

"So, Noel. Let me ask you something."

"Yeah?" I said, stabbing the toast with the fork. It smelled good in the fresh morning air. I didn't need to eat so often, but it didn't mean that I couldn't. Sara watched me killing the toast for a while. She looked amused. "Do you always eat so…" she paused, searching for a word. I looked up.

"Huh? What?" I said. I hadn't realized that my eating was awkward too.

"I don't know. It looks like you're _hunting _the toast." She said, and I couldn't help but break out laughing. She couldn't have been more accurate.

"Anyway, that's not what I was gonna ask you about." Sara shook her head. She was laughing too. And then she asked a question that was so out-of-blue, at least I thought it was, that I almost blurted out the truth for an answer. Almost.

"How old are you?" Sara asked.

"Seve…" I stopped myself in time. I almost said seventy three. That would have been so awkward. Sara looked a little confused, so I had to cover it up somehow.

"Seven plus twenty years." I finally managed to say, grinning weakly. It sounded dumb even to my ears.

"Oh… Twenty seven?" Sara looked taken aback. "You sure look a lot younger than that."

"Well," I shrugged. "I can't help it."

Sara smiled. I smiled too. It was another thing I couldn't help. Not looking like I should at my age, and smiling like an idiot whenever Serah did. Or Sara.

"How are the eggs?" Sara asked. I stared back dumbly at her, before I realized that she was referring to the yellow-and-white stuff on the plates. I couldn't believe I'd forgotten _eggs_.

"Oh, they're great. Great… eggs." I nodded enthusiastically. For some reason, this made Sara laugh again. And I laughed with her. Like I said, I couldn't help it.

The pub opened up a little after lunch, and I was busy helping Sara out. I took orders, carried drinks and food to the people, listened to them babble on drunk, stopped a fight between two guys, and smiled awkward at girls who smiled at me way too often. All the time I had an eye on Sara too, in case the man showed up again. I was pretty sure I'd recognize him if I saw him. I got a good look at his shadow. Only it was the profile of his face. So whenever a suspicious-looking man walked in, I made an excuse to walk around him and study the side of his face. So far, nothing. I felt myself loosen up a little bit. Plus the atmosphere of the place was getting to me. I'd never been strong with alcohol. I was just not used to it. One time forty-something years ago, it was Serah's birthday and Snow took me and Hope for a drink. Hope sipped his glass gracefully, like he does, and patiently nodded and listened to Snow drag his words across the floor. Hope never got drunk. Snow was a little tipsier than usual, but only after bottles and bottles of alcohol. Me, I'd never drunk in my life until that time. I refused it at first, but Snow was insistent. It was him that got me drunk and therefore his fault that put me off alcohol forever. Snow told me he regretted it too, apologizing profusely. "Sorry, man," he'd said for the thousandth time, and then, grinning wickedly, "let me make up for it. I'll buy you a drink."

Seriously, his sense of humor.

Hope later told me that it took three guys to coax and drag me out of the bar that day, I was crying so much. God, I almost died of embarrassment and didn't speak to either of them for a whole week.

And I'd kept to my words. I haven't drunk anything since then. The smell of alcohol in the pub was intoxicating. Almost like the air was drunk too. I was leaning against the bar. Staring blankly at all the noise and the laughter and the drunk air. Sara tapped me on the shoulder.

"Hey, Noel, are you okay? You look exhausted."

"Huh?" I startled. I hadn't felt her approach. I guess my senses had been numbed by too much stimulation.

"Oh, yeah, I'm fine. You sure… do a lot of work around here." I imagined working here every day, alone, and it made me shudder. I looked at Sara with renewed awe. To think that I thought _hunting _was hard.

"It's not that bad, usually." Sara laughed. "You get used to it, you learn when to listen and when to walk away… plus there are so many people here today than there normally are. So many _girls_." She nodded at me meaningfully. Or I thought it looked meaningful, though I didn't really know what it meant.

"Oh…" I said, not really knowing what to say. Sara smirked at my expression.

"Sometimes you're so cute, Noel." She said wisely, as if that decided everything. I frowned, at the same time feeling my face flush. I was really glad it was dark and she couldn't see the color of my face.

"I… think I need some air." I finally said. Sara laughed, nodded, and pointed to the back door. "Take a break. You deserve it."

I smiled in return, and left the pub. I was only gone for ten minutes. I didn't go far, just stayed in the back yard with my hands in my pocket and staring up at the moon. I let my guard down.

That was really very stupid of me, because of course that was when all the bad things happened. When you least expect them to. When you let your guard down for the briefest of moments.


End file.
